Against All Enemies Foreign and Domestic

The judge in my case could clearly see that my interests were in the adult and that I never once brought up the subject of sex with her fictitious children.  Know this too, the judge had taken more time now to review all the information she received about me from the two best know people in the region to diagnose sexual predators and pedophiles.  These same two people are used by the state nearly exclusively in San Diego to convict men and women of sexual crimes based on the results of the tests and interviews they conduct.  In my case between the two of them they had given me every test known to the United States to disclose a pedophile and or a predator.  Every test and every interview led them to the same conclusion that I was neither a pedophile or predator.  Not one single test result would lead them to believe that I was other than a normal adult male in my 40s and they thought I had been set up.  The police only had a few days to edited the chats and emails we exchanged from December of 1999 through March of 2000.  As such they simply did not have enough time to take out 100% of the evidence that my sole interest were in the adult female.  She had over this period of time contacted me 99% of the time. She 100% of the time brought up the subject of sex with her fictitious children.  She prodded and probed me almost daily for the problems between my x-wife and I.  So that the next time she would contact me she would know exactly what buttons to push to draw me closer to herself.  She even sent me more than a dozen pictures of herself. She also sent about 4 pictures of children she claimed to be her two children.  What was kept from the court and my defense attorney and the world was the weekend before I traveled to California to accept my job as Director of Information Services for Direct TV, (the very reason I came to California in the first place, also kept from the court and the public) I had sent her an 8 page email with the pictures of her fictitious children pointing out how in no way were they the same children and that I simply did not believe they even were real and I was not interested in them at all any way.  Amazing how the police can manipulate evidence.

Here is the story behind the judges request for me to change my plea to Not Guilty for Entrapment.

Feds' Online Sex Lure Ruled Entrapment. Are You Next? 

JUNE 2000: A federal court ruling may slap a leash on federal cyber agents looking for online predators whose fetishes cross from the bizarre into the criminal. Freeing a man convicted of trying to have sex with children, a divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that Mark Douglas Poehlman was entrapped by federal agents who -- through an America Online persona named Sharon -- overstepped their bounds in luring the cross dressing Air Force veteran to be a "special man teacher" to Sharon's three imaginary girls. " There is surely enough real crime in our society that it is unnecessary for our law enforcement officials to spend months luring an obviously lonely and confused individual to cross the line between fantasy and criminality," wrote Judge Alex Kozinski, who was joined by Senior Judge Betty Fletcher. Senior Judge David Thompson dissented, saying that whether the judges would have ruled differently from the jury is irrelevant. “Our task as an appellate court is not to reweigh the evidence but to uphold the jury's verdict so long as substantial evidence supports it," Thompson wrote. Poehlman was divorced from his wife and discharged from the Air Force after 17 years, when he could no longer keep his foot fetish and impulse to dress in women's clothing a secret. Alone and working at a retail electronics store, he began trolling Internet chat rooms for a like minded woman. Having been rebuffed at every turn, he responded to an online ad from "Sharon" seeking a man with a military background who would not judge her family by society's norms. Correspondence ensued and Sharon implied -- but never said outright -- that Poehlman should have sex with her children, even going so far as to suggest it was a condition of further correspondence. “Sharon repeatedly held her own relationship with Poehlman hostage to his fulfilling the role of special man teacher," Kozinski noted in a footnote. It clearly took Poehlman a while to catch on, but he eventually began sending graphic responses to Sharon's request to outline what he had in mind for her children. After traveling to California to meet Sharon in a Los Angeles hotel room, he was arrested by local and federal agents. Poehlman plead no contest to state charges of attempted lewd acts with a minor and was given time served plus three years' probation. With six months' probation left, he was indicted on federal charges of crossing state lines to have sex with a minor. A judge sentenced him to 10 years.
The 9th Circuit held that by materially altering the balance of risks and rewards bearing on Poelhman's decision to commit the crime, the government induced him to do something he otherwise was not predisposed to do. Because the court found he was entrapped, it never reached Poelhman’s double jeopardy claim. “Even after Sharon gave him an opening [to discuss having sex with her daughters], Poehlman continued to focus his sexual attention on the mother and not the daughters: 'If you don't mind me wearing your hose and licking your toes then I am open for anything,'" Kozinski wrote, quoting a Poehlman e-mail. “I’m happy for Mark," said Torrance, Calif., solo Edward Robinson, hired for the defense by Poehlman's parents. "Clearly, he was induced by the government.” But Robinson didn't think the opinion would curtail law enforcement's online activities. “It’s 90 percent facts and 10 percent law," Robinson said. But the conviction wasn't overturned for errors in procedure. In fact, the court noted the jury was given the proper instructions under the law. Instead, the panel simply said the methods employed by the government went too far. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, which argued the case, refrained from commenting specifically on it. “We are disappointed by the court's decision, but understand that the court has spoken," spokesperson Adriene Hill said. Poehlman, now a preoperative transsexual, has served 2 1/2 years in state and federal prisons.

Please try to understand some things about the time I was in jail and trying to defend myself and family.  First of all my lawyer was recommended to me by my employer at the time.  They also paid him his first deposit of $6,000.  We only met about 5 minutes prior to my first court appearance which was 5 full days after I was arrested.  We never had any time to discuss a single thing. That gave the police 5 full days to go over thousands of printed chats and emails to edited them the best they could to enhance my guilt and their case against me.  99% of my time with my lawyer was spent talking with him over a jail house phone of which 100% of the conversations were recorded by the police there.  By law they were warned by my lawyer verbally each time we talked about using the conversations between he and I against me.  However, there is no law what so ever that prevented them from using what I said to help them cover their blunders.  Each time I tried to tell him to get electronic copies of the evidence so that editing could be proved he did not understand what I was saying about the digital signature that each file maintains for a creation date, and every single edit date to that file after the creation date. I tried to explain to him that is why it was imperative that he obtain the electronic version of the evidence they were using not just their simple printed versions they gave to him, the court and leaked to the press.  As a result of their listening into our conversations they then in turn destroyed 100% of the electronic data by destroying my computers and disks that I had saved.  Every time I tried to bring up the fact that they destroyed my property in violation of the court order to return it to me he would simply say that I could not afford to continue to fight them and if they were capable of this I needed to fear what else they could do more.

The day I was sentenced I wanted to bring to the judges attention that they destroyed my property but he would not allow it saying this is not the time to piss off the judge or the police anymore.  Just let it ride out and not to go back on my plea.  It was nearly 3 weeks later that he told me the judge herself had taken him and the prosecutor back to her chambers for nearly 30 minutes while she told my own lawyer she wanted me to change my plea based on the recent 9th circuit court of appeals ruling based on the Mark Douglas Poehlman above. He told me we can't go back on the deal we made they would have immediately revoked my release on my own recognizance and held me in jail for an additional two years while I awaited trial.  I would be found innocent but it would cost me two years in jail and some $250,000 in additional legal fees that I could not get to pay him with.